McDonald’s – Food Industry Mobile App

Android & iOS Mobile Apps

McDonald’s – Food Industry Mobile App

Project summary

The McDonald's brand is probably one of the best-known on Earth. McDonald’s famous value proposition of consistent quality of food served quickly in a uniform manner worldwide is not easy to deliver. Plus, while not mentioned in its value proposition, cost control and profitability are at the top of their objectives. We developed 3 efficient mobile apps with simple, intuitive UX/UI that load external data and update McDonald’s systems

The Challenge

To develop a system that improves communication between the franchises and suppliers. Also monitoring management of suppliers and franchisees processes enabling them, as well as the corporate level, to benefit.

Solution

To develop a series of mobile apps for McDonald’s for internal employee use. The apps successfully achieved their goals improving the targeted internal processes. The apps were adopted by the entire McDonald's Latin America network.

We developed 3 efficient mobile apps with simple, intuitive UX/UI that load external data and update McDonald’s systems. We utilized Appcelerator with a backend using Python with Django. The internally used mobile apps were designed to run on Android and iOS for mobile and tablet. The mobile app development projects included:

Solution

Bakery Product Stock

& Delivery Control

Solution

Control IT

Computer Equipment Asset Manager

Solution

Ticket IT Equipment

Repair Tracking

Solution 1

Bakery Product Stock

& Delivery Control

The first mobile app for internal use we developed for the customer was designed to control the tracking of trays used for the transfer of bakery products from bakeries to franchised restaurants.

The McDonald's bakeries needed a loss prevention tool to solve the problem of losing trays of product as they were transferred from the bakery to the delivery trucks to the franchise location.

The tray tracker app achieves stock control and prevents loss through human error by having the bakery manager confirm the transferred trays passed to the truck driver’s responsibility. Upon arrival at the restaurant the same delivery process is repeated and confirmed in the app that the trays of baked goods are all transferred from the delivery truck to the restaurant manager.

Employees find the mobile app easy to learn and quick to use so compliance with the tracking process is not an issue. The app works offline and syncs with McDonald’s legacy systems. The locations no longer lose the product without knowing who is responsible for the loss because of the 2-way verification process that the app enables and enforces. This increases profitability for the corporation and improves communications with the individual franchises regarding delivery of their buns and other baked goods.

The tray tracking app was implemented in one McDonald’s location as an MVP and because of its successful adoption by employees and achieving the goals of reducing inventory loss was soon implemented in hundreds of locations throughout Latin America.

Solution 2

Control IT

Computer Equipment Asset Manager

The second application we developed for McDonald’s was Control IT, an app to carry out a system infrastructure inventory control (stock of computer equipment by branch). McDonald’s problem was that it had no visibility to its IT infrastructure including point of sales equipment, backoffice support equipment, and digital infrastructure.

With the app, the equipment available in each branch is loaded into the system as it is added. During regular internal audits, on-location employees use the Control IT mobile app to confirm the validity of the computer equipment inventory data loaded based on their inspection of the equipment at each branch.

The user-friendly mobile app provides an efficient, accurate, and repeatable process of monitoring computer equipment inventory and communicating about its accuracy and deficits. The app provides a checklist of the steps of the audit process to not only show the status of each audit, but also to motivate the auditing staff to complete audits in a timely manner. The bakery tray tracking app expedites internal audit making the process more efficient and improves communication between the asset management personnel and the on-location personnel.

The mobile app supports multi-language and scaling for use in different LATAM countries.

Solution 3

Ticket IT Equipment

Repair Tracking

The third application for internal use by McDonald's aims to expedite outsourcing of equipment repairs at various locations by enabling the capture the requests for service in tickets that are assigned to various technical service providers through a web tool.

McDonald's equipment repair vendors use the Ticket IT mobile app to receive notifications of tickets assigned by McDonald’s to and then to transfer the details in the tickets to technicians who schedule a service call and make the repairs. The technicians use the mobile app to set a target date for completing the repair and to describe the details of the case such as the problem, parts used, and repairs performed. Ticket IT also captures pictures of the needed and completed repairs.

The ticket management app provides a central repository for repair needs that was previously lacking making it challenging, if not impossible, to manage repair costs and making sure equipment is repaired in a timely fashion. It also has excellent historical data about repairs for future reference.

The app employs dynamic screen displays and content modes to manage different user roles and permissions.